Stephen Colbert went live as he and Jimmy Kimmel stayed up late to respond to President Trump’s first address before the joint sessions of Congress for his second term — and the late-night hosts were not impressed with his words, or the Democrat response in the room.
“Any time this maniac speaks, it’s a joint session,” said Kimmel on Jimmy Kimmel Live! “It’s a joint session, it’s an edibles session, it’s a raid the medicine cabinet for anything to dull the pain kind of night!”
It was a very long speech and a very long night, with Donald Trump speaking to Congress and the nation on Tuesday night for more than 90 minutes.
Maybe he was jealous of Adrien Brody’s record-breaking long Oscars speech, as Trump set a record of his own, surpassing President Clinton’s 2000 State of the Union address at 88 minutes to give the longest speech since the American Presidency Project began tracking such things in 1964.
As noted by NPR, though, while Trump’s speech was long in duration, it was far lighter in words. With the GOP standing up after nearly every sentence, Trump only got out 9,831 words in this speech, a mark far surpassed by President Carter’s final speech in 1981, clocking in with an epic 33,667 words.
Nevertheless, Trump had Republicans eating out of his hands for all of those words, and most of the Democrats sitting on theirs in protest throughout the night. They couldn’t even muster the strength to stand or clap for any of the regular citizens Trump brought to represent their stories of tragedy and triumph.
They did, however, offer some silent protests, which neither late-night host was particularly impressed by. Throughout the speech, they could be seen holding up pre-printed paddles with messages like ‘False’ and ‘Save Medicaid’ and ‘Musk Steals,’ while some had small whiteboards for writing messages like, “That’s a LIE!”
“The Democrats came ready to fight back with their little paddles,” Colbert quipped on The Late Show. “That is how you save Democracy, by quietly dissenting — or bidding on an antique tea set; it was hard to tell what was going on.”
“I’m just kidding, that was very cool Democrats. In fact, I made my own sign,” he added before holding up a sign reading, “Try Doing Something.”
One Congressman who did do something during the speech was Texas Representative Al Green, who stood up and began shouting at Trump shortly after the speech began. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson called for order, and eventually ordered Green thrown out.
“Little Mike’s johnson is going to be standing up very proud when he gets home,” Kimmel quipped of the moment “‘Remove this gentleman from the chamber. And bring me my pouch of nuts.'”
“Some people have questioned why so much muscle was needed to remove one old man with a cane,” said Colbert. “But it turns out it was for a serious reason. When security searched him, they found that he had smuggled in a spine.”
Colbert broke down the speech almost message by message, starting with the theme, “The Renewal of the American Dream.”
“I don’t know if I wanna sign up for the renewal,” he admitted, before sharing some moments from Trump’s speech, like when he proudly stated that free speech was back in America, thanks to him.
“Oh thank goodness! somebody go tell Congressman Green,” Colbert responded to the quote. “Just knock on the side of that windowless van they shoved him into.”
Kimmel noted when “Trump said our momentum is back, our spirit is back, our pride is back — and not the gay kind, either, the regular pride!”
But with all that boasting, the late-night host admitted, “What he’s talking about, I have no idea. The stock market is down. Consumer confidence is down. The dollar is down. The only things that are high are egg prices and Elon Musk.”
Both hosts took note of the very audible reaction when Trump said that “‘the days of rule by unelected bureaucrats are over,” with Colbert quickly slipping into his impression of the president to add, “And the days of rule by unelected billionaires have just begun. Elon, take a bow, Elon. You paid for it!”
Kimmel marveled that Trump had even said those words “with Elon sitting right there, clapping like an imbecile.”
But he did have a suggestion of his own on one position that could be eliminated from the federal government. When Trump lamented in his speech that there was nothing he could do to make the Democrats stand or applaud, the hosts were ready with a quick suggestion.
“Oh, I don’t know, try saying, ‘I resign,'” Colbert suggested, while Kimmel took it a little further, saying, “You could quit. You could go back to Mar-a-Lago and shove your head down that gold toilet for a few months.”
“It was a ridiculous speech,” Kimmel said to sum up the experience of watching it. Colbert agreed, saying, “In the end, Trump’s first address to Congress was much like his first six weeks, filled with useful lies and applauded by useless idiots.”
Kimmel then closed his segment with another opposition response, this time from his sidekick Guillermo who gave it in Spanish. After much shuffling of his papers, and drinking of water Guillermo eventually declared, via translation, “That speech was a piece of s–t.”
